In our continual coverage of the World Cup, we bring you a translation of a post entitled “Why Chinese People Are Not Good at Football” from the blog of a professor (李银河) at the 中国社会科学院社会学所 (Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences):

“Alot of people are pained by the fact that Chinese football did not makes it…

Reporters Without Borders: The Chinese authorities seem to have stopped blocking access to the
international version of Google’s search engine, Google.com. Tests
carried out by Reporters Without Borders show that it is again
accessible in Beijing and Shanghai. Google’s unblocking tends to
confirm the theory that online censorship was stepped up for the
anniversary of the Tiananmen Square…

John Kennedy at GlobalVoices has a wonderful translation of numerous Chinese blog posts about the latest media twist in the Chinese blogosphere: big name bloggers publishing books of blog posts. Wish we knew more about who was reading them…people who can’t easily access the Internet? Who would like to have more time online but don’t? And of course,…

We all have our own ideas about what charity is and how to make it happen. Charity on the Chinese mainland takes place within the context of socialist class ideologies, Chinese Buddhism, newly resurrected pre-revolutionary civic structures, Chinese-style non-governmental organizations, and emerging Western-influenced philanthropy.

In the last few years, bloggers have also voiced social justice issues, such as the “BMW case”…

The confluence of girls and blogs, a kind of Chinese Idol/blogger beauty pageant, took place April 13- May 13th in Beijing. Sponsored by China’s largest blogsite, Bokee 博客网, the girls were judged on number of votes they received online, the quality (creativity, originality) of their blog posts, blog traffic and blog comments. Sounds reasonable. The top 20…

China Web2.0 Review points to recent statistics (originally translated by cwr, edited by me) from Jack Gu’s blog (Gu Shaofeng), founder of Chinese podcast aggregator Podlook. Gu notes that, despite the numbers below, he and other Chinese experts are seeing a plateau in terms of quality of content and number of listeners. “On…

While we are busy writing about Xu Jinglei’s blog knocking BoingBoing off the top spot at Technorati, bloghoo.Sohu.com puts Xu well below China’s really popular blogs–at least on Sohu, one of China’s top portals. Nydia Chen, who’s working with us at Virtual China this summer, will be doing a comparison of the top portals’ blogging ranks, so watch…

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Jason Li is a designer, illustrator and consultant currently based in Hong Kong. Once upon a time, he studied engineering and ran a news site about fan translations of video games.

Tricia Wang observes how technology makes us human. Her ethnographic research follows youth and migrants as they process information and desire, remaking cities and rural areas.

Jin Ge aka Jingle is a writer, documentary filmmaker, and NGO organizer based in Shanghai. Jin does sociological research and produces multi-media content on the subjects of Internet subcultures and grass-root organizations in China. He is currently a senior design researcher at IDEO.

An Xiao Mina is a design strategist, new media artist and digital community builder in the Pearl River Delta. She uses technology to build and empower communities through design and artistic expression.

Graham Webster is a Beijing-based writer and analyst working at the intersection of politics, history, and information technology in China and East Asia. He believes technology and information design can reveal some of what what wonkdom can’t.

Christina Xu is an observer and organizer of communities, both online and off-. She is particularly interested in youth subcultures, cultural translation & syncretism, and user reappropriations of technology.

Lyn Jeffery is a cultural anthropologist and researcher at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit group in Palo Alto, California. She studies new experiences enabled by connective technologies.